The Works of Lori Carlson

Tag Archives: Short Story Reviews

Eight friends rent a lodge in Aspen to do some skiing. However, plans take a drastic change when a blizzard sets in and one of the friends ends up dead, in a locked room. Luckily, the man who brought the group to the lodge is Lieutenant Davis who is the father of Bridget Davis, one of the lodgers. Due to the storm, there is no way in or out and they are shut in with the dead body of Lauren Crusher and the killer. Everyone is a suspect, including the lieutenant, but Davis has a job to do until help can be contacted. All seven remaining friends seem to have had problems with the deceased in varying degrees. As Davis interviews each of the friends and searches their rooms for evidence, can he figure out how Lauren died and who wanted her dead?

The Naked Eye by Angela Kay is a short mystery. Although short on word count, Kay uses her skill as a storyteller to define each character and set up a plot that gives a surprising twist at the end. Kay never fails to drop small hints that you realize only once you’ve finished one of her stories. As with her novels, this short story is heavy on detail, including a rich setting, real characters and well-defined plot.

I highly recommend this short story for anyone who just wants a quick mystery to entice them, for those who’ve read Kay’s other three novels (The Murder of Manny Grimes, Blood Runs Cold, and I Can Kill) or anyone who is new to her work.

Other Novels by Angela Kay

About the Author

Equipped with a professional writing degree from Augusta State University, Angela Kay always had the imagination and passion of a writer. She has written many, many short stories in her lifetime, most of which won’t ever see the light of day!

During college, her playwright professor had urged her to submit her one-act play to a 2009 playwright contest. To her shock and glory, she was one of 23 across the United States to win for her one-act entitled “Digging Deeper.” Because of this, she was able to spend a week in Atlanta at the Horizon Theater Company.

She’d begun writing her first novel, The Murder of Manny Grimes in 2009 during a Creative Writing college course. The first draft was well-received by her peers and professor. After seven years of writing and re-writing, the final draft of Manny Grimes became so unrecognizable and so different from the direction she initially went in. Finally, finding the nerves to show it to the public, Angela published it in 2016 with ThomasMax Publishing. A year later, she followed it up with a second book, Blood Runs Cold.

Realizing how difficult it is to break into the whole writing scheme, Angela began a blog to help other authors, many of which deserve glory. Between her busy life and keeping up with her writing, she enjoys reading and reviewing books written by both traditional authors and independent authors.

Angela draws her inspiration from international bestselling author, Steven James, as well as Agatha Christie and James Patterson.

A Cerberus Jaw by Lee A. Jackson is a 13-page (7,460 words) Fantasy short story. Jackson introduces the reader to Clay, a man who lives his life via order and routine. He must walk the same path each day to meet Elsa (his wife) at Mrs. Quinn’s Tea Room and perform a shaving ritual each day. Along that path, he encounters a dog that he has named Cerberus who quickly becomes Clay’s nemesis. A fear of this beast grows, but because of his need for order and routine, Clay forces himself to pass the corner house where this dog is fenced in instead of crossing the street to avoid it. Everything changes after the Coffee Bang. Instead of order, Clay’s grief causes his life to spiral into chaos. During his shaving ritual one morning after the Coffee Bang, Clay discovers a black strip along his jaw – a black, sucking hole that confuses, fascinates and consumes him.

Jackson tells this story in the present with flashbacks to the moment of the Coffee Bang. This weaving of the past and the present allows the reader to witness the breakdown of reality in Clay’s life. It also creates suspense. Just what is this Coffee Bang and what does it have to do with the black hole in Clay’s jaw?

Jackson is a clever storyteller, one who slowly builds upon the story by dropping small hints along the way that entices and encourages the reader to keep reading to the very end. His characters are well-developed, the settings are masterfully descriptive, and the scenes of the Coffee Bang are rich in details. What I enjoy most about this story is the way Jackson uses Cerberus as a metaphor for fear, loss and grief throughout the entire story.

The Moment is a 10-page Science Fiction short story. The story begins with an archaeocaster named Cwaliheema who seeks to broadcast about the Mark and the long lost story of its origin and the race of people involved, but before it can complete its transmission, it is snuffed out. Over time, others come to the same moon to witness the Mark and try to understand all that has occurred on the moon since the discovery of the Mark – a race of clones known as the Krenn, mere specks who eventually kill themselves in a horrible war; Seela, a broccoli-stalk king of the Vegetable World who sucks up the remnants of the dead Krenn, only to be poisoned by them and dies; a peer review chorus from the Trindle Journal of Medical Profundities who complete their job and disperse; a library protocol who fails to recognize it has become obsolete in its pursuit of the Moon, the Mark and all who’ve come before it to that place, and is eventually erased from lack of interest and funding; auditing particulates who arrive after no trace is left of the events on the Moon with the exception of the Mark, and whose audit takes far too long and yields nothing of significance, but stories of it later become folklore; and lastly, a coterie of proto-godlings led by a liquid hydrogen tutor. The Mark creates The Moment, an event of extreme importance, as explained by the tutor.

Schoen is a masterful story-teller. He weaves words like fine cloth, creating intricate, detailed suits of events. He takes seemingly unlikely things and creates believable beings out of them full of life – lives that end in tragedies and disappointments.

The story is told like an unfolding folktale, rich in poetic language that will leave you in awe. This is a story to be read again and again, to slowly savor bit by bit until you’ve devoured it completely, satiated by its beauty.

Rating: 5 Stars

Genre: Science Fiction

To Read: If you’d like to read the story, please contact and follow Lawrence on Twitter @klingonguy. He will gladly direct you to a free copy of it.